"There got off'n the train a little stout man, with a clean baby skin and clean baby eyes. He looked as if he'd got born into this wicked world with a bald spot, gray side-whiskers and a pair of gold-rimmed specks. He made me feel sad—not that he weren't cheerful enough, but his rig was that of a parson, and a parson naturally reminded me of matrimony, and there was only one thing worse than loafing around Jim Creek, and that was matrimony. 'Yes,' I says to myself, lookin' at that nice, clean old gentleman, 'he little knows the trouble he's made in this world. And yet,' thinks I, willing to be square, 'I don't know as you could have kept 'em apart, even if there weren't no ministers. Man is born to trouble as a powder-mill is to fly upward. Male and female He made 'em, after their kind; and it's only reasonable that they've been after their kind ever since. And more'n that, that gentleman would have checked my wild career—he'd have held me down to one. So why should I wish to walk on his collar?'
"Whilest I was Hamlettin' to myself like that the old boy talked to the station agent. Billy leaned on the truck and pointed to me. 'There's your man right now,' says he; 'Mr. E. G. Washington Scraggs, the most famous guide and hunter in Arizona. I ain't got a doubt you can secure his services,' and off goes Billy.
"Railroad men get used to takin' life on the run, from eatin' to jokes. Bill never waited to see the effect of his little spring on me.
"My friend comes up to me. 'Is this Mr. Scraggs?' he says.
"'I am a modest man by nature,' says I; 'and yet I cannot deny it.'
"He made me a bow. I made him a bow.
"'I am told, Mr. Scraggs,' says he, 'that you are a celebrated guide and hunter?'
"'If you go through this land believing all that's told you,' says I, 'you'll have a queer sensation in your head. However, I can do plain guiding and hunting, all right. What am I to guide, and who am I to hunt?'
"'I shall explain to you," says he, taking off his specks and tapping his hand with 'em—he was a nice, home-raised old gentleman, but he sure did think his own affairs was interesting. 'It is this way,' says he: 'my ministerial labors have—er—exhausted, that is to say, prostrated me. My physician insisted I should come to this climate, where I am told it is exceedingly dry and healthful, and live entirely out-of-doors; to return to our healing mother, Nature; to salute the rosy youth of Morning from a couch of sod, to bid farewell to Day from some yearning height, far from the petty madness of cities—what did you say, Mr. Scraggs?'
"'I said "Ya-a-s,"' says I, quick, because I'd forgot myself a trifle.